Man unknowingly had 3.5-inch nail lodged in brain

ORLAND PARK, Ill. - A suburban Chicago man thought the errant nail that discharged from the gun he was working with had whizzed by his head. Instead, it was lodged in his brain.

Family members say Dante Autullo spent more than a day with the 3.5-inch nail in his head before having it removed Thursday.

"It's a miracle," his fiancee Gail Glaenzer said to the Southtown Star in Tinley Park, Ill. "Un-freaking-believable."

The 32-year-old was tinkering in the garage of his Orland Park home Tuesday when then the nail gun went off. He saw a small wound but couldn't find the nail and thought he sustained the injury when the gun whipped him in the head.  After his fiancee didn't see anything weird in the wound, he went outside to shovel snow, according to the Southtown Star.

He went to work the next day but later went to the hospital with nausea and one monster of a headache.

That's when an X-ray uncovered the nail -- just millimeters away from the area of the brain that controls motor functions, CBS station WBBM in Chicago reported.

Autullo is recovering after a four-hour surgery to have the nail removed. WBBM said doctors said the surgery was successful, and they replaced part of his skull with a mesh and titanium plate. However, they are still monitoring him for complications.